The Frytown plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Chance of showers
2° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 6° in 2014.
Frytown’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cherokee Group and Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Frytown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Old Mans Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,490 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Frytown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Frytown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Frytown normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Iowa City Municipal Airport, 11 miles east-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
